Etymologies

Short for raccoon.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

Eric Lott and other scholars have argued that expressions of antiblack racism by Irish Americans—such as the lynchings of blacks during the New York City draft riots of 1863, or their invention of the word coon, or the deliberate attempts by some to belittle blacks in minstrel performances—were efforts to hide “their resemblance, in both class and ethnic terms, to ‘blackness.’”